Many aircrafts use one or more bulkheads (i.e., partitions) or curtains to screen a cabin. If an aircraft uses a bulkhead in its cabin, a door opening with a lateral slide type door could be provided in association with the bulkhead to allow passengers to get through the bulkhead. In many cases, the level of aisle way in a smaller aircraft (e.g., light jet) is lower than the level of a seating area floor because having a lower aisle way provides maximum headroom and is easier for passengers to move in the cabin. In this case, there will be a large opening at the bottom of the door due to the aisle way even if the doors are closed. To obstruct the large opening, descenders are sometimes used in some smaller aircraft in association with one or more slide type doors disposed laterally within the bulkhead of the aircraft. Such descenders are useful to preserve passengers' privacy and to reduce noise in the cabin. The descender can take the form of one or more panels that covers the large opening disposed below the slide type doors.
For example, in one application, one or more bulkhead doors are provided to close an opening defined between a pair of spaced apart fixed solid bulkheads within the aircraft fuselage. The fuselage is generally circular in cross-section with the fixed solid bulkheads protruding radially inward from the fuselage. The one or more doors can close the door opening defined between the fixed solid bulkheads. Typically, this is done by employing sliding doors that converge together when closed from positions recessed within or adjacent the fixed solid bulkheads.
Known descenders include so-called automatic rotary descenders. These are actuated mechanically when the door to which the descender is associated is slidably moved. For example, when the door is open, the descender rotates at the bottom of the door in a plane generally parallel with the door and opens the aisle opening automatically in response to the movement of the door; when the door is closed, the descender rotates at the bottom of the door again in the plan generally parallel with the door and closes the aisle opening automatically in response to the movement of the door.
In one specific known automatic rotary style descender, the descender is forced to rotate by being pressed on a carpet edge provided or defining the aisle opening in response to the movement of the door when the door is opened. The descender is stored in the interspace of the door in response to the movement of the door. In another known arrangement, cables are used to rotate and store the descender in a particular path as the door is opened. These rotary arrangements are relatively complex and therefore expensive. In particular, there are often space restrictions and issues with reliability of deployment for the so-called automatic rotary style descenders. The rotating style requires significant amounts of space to store the descender in the door and the descenders require large gaps for clearance purposes because head of each descender is easy to interfere each other when they are rotating. This means that it is difficult to obstruct the opening of the aisle way tightly with the traditional automatic rotary style descenders. In addition, the cable actuated style easily jams or malfunctions and operation is not always smooth.